History

At Saligent, its not just theory. Our founders have delivered best-practice LeadsToRevenue solutions to aspiring enterprises of all sizes including Fortune 500, small and mid-size companies, franchise owners, as well as the local merchant down the street. We treasure the awards and recognition our customers and industry colleagues have bestowed from global supplier-of-the-year, to Six-Sigma nominations, to heart-felt thank you notes for a job well done.

Saligent's story begins in 1986 when co-founders Laura McGuire and Jeffry Ziegler worked together as colleagues for United Technologies Corporation. They collaborated to create a first-of-its-kind lead qualification process. Jeff and Laura used the earliest relational databases, first-generation PCs and outbound calling efforts to qualify and capture prospect preferences, deliver closable leads to sales staff and use the resulting intelligence to launch the first database marketing touches before the term had been invented. Combining Jeff's engineering and work flow prowess and Laura's marketing vision (and her desire to survive a demanding sales force), a solution was born! A solution which worked remarkably well! Necessity is most definitely the mother of invention.

Years later, Jeff and Laura recognized an opportunity to take their better mouse trap, invented for internal use, to the outside world. They incorporated Saligent in 1993 and moved into a 1000-square-foot cinder block office warehouse next door to an auto-mechanic shop (convenient when Laura's tires needed rotating). By 1995, the burgeoning Colorado Springs company landed its first international account, NEC Electronics. By 2000, Saligent passed the 200-employee mark, had the respect of its peers and competitors alike, and suitors came calling. Saligent was acquired by Protocol Communications in 2000 (Harland-Clarke acquired Protocol's Colorado Springs operation in 2009). In 1998, Saligent had spun out a venture-capital funded enterprise marketing automation (EMA) company, LeadWorks, whose assets were acquired in 2003 by Ernst & Young Technology. Also in 2000, upon the sale of Saligent, McGuire founded Qgenisys, a consulting firm specializing in sales lead management for companies with "distributed enterprises" who use channel partners and/or franchise and business opportunity structures to reach their marketplaces. Qgenisys acquired expertise and intellectual property (patents and SaaS applications) in the now emerging Crowdsourcing, Labor-as-a-Service, and Cloud Labor arenas.

Today, Saligent founders and headquarters staff are extending their expert reach through a network of extraordinary, carefully-selected sales and marketing gurus who live and work near their customers while they access world-class Saligent solutions and practices from anywhere. Saligent founders know by experience the strategic impact their contributions have made to their Fortune 500 clients. They have the passion and ingenuity to make these high-impact LeadstoRevenue solutions just as available to aspiring enterprises of every size and in any community, on land or in the cloud.